Tounge in Cheek -01

To Our Neutral and Objective FriendsJeevaraj At a time when so many neutral and objective people are trying to show how left liberals suffer from confirmation bias against the Sangh Parivar, this fool Jeevaraj BJP MLA had to go and ruin it all. Even after Sandalwood Lankesh confirmed that Naxalites had murdered his sister.

Why couldn’t he wait for the Govt to tell us what really happened like the rest of the neutral and objective people? Will they ever pull as a team or will some hotheaded minister or MLA shoot off his mouth and ruin this objective climate? Not to mention all the trolls on Twiter and Facebook who make gloating sneering remarks and compare Gauri Lankesh to a “bitch (kutiya) that was eliminated, serve her right, nyah nyah!”. However as neutral and objective people will be quick to point out, these are “fringe elements” and all political sides have these, especially in places like Kerala where RSS intellectuals and journalists are also systematically murdered.

(There is no need to take objection to this. I am respecting the RSS activists by calling them intellectuals and journalists because in this day and age “who decides” who has intellect and anyone can be a journalist even when he/she is reporting that Mariamma in the next village gave birth to quintuplets, and what price “qualifications” hey? Also, all life is precious, even that of your would-be assassin. )

Fringe elements ruin everything neutral objective people work hard to do, by creating a climate that is impossible to ignore. Of course, when investigating a murder, the police and other investigative agencies can’t wait for an official communiqué from the govt that will settle all our questions.

That is because their investigations and findings result in this communiqué, as any neutral and objective person will also admit. So a cop cannot really sit on his hands and wait for an official statement because he is part of the process.

As any cop will tell you, when there is a theft, robbery or a murder, he has to look at probable cause.

Probable cause includes many things.

It includes eyewitnesses, unsubstantiated rumors, as well as the climate that surrounds the victim which in Gauri Lankesh’s case included a vast number of death threats from those who took umbrage at her articles. One can neutrally and objectively state that her articles were anti BJP and anti Sangh Parivar and those issuing the threats were of these ideologies in a vehement uncompromising manner.

The needle of suspicion of the cops and investigative agencies would thus point in these directions as qa first response. Perhaps, so would that of sundry journalists and the meddlesome public. It is instinct after all. Meddlesome people have instincts too and they can’t all be neutral and objective. Very often cops follow up on those instincts and build up a case with very tangible results.

I am sure there must be some Naxalite out there who wanted Gauri dead if Sandalwood says so.

After all Radical Commies cannot be trusted, even though Gauri Lankesh spoke up for them a lot, and Lefties with confirmation bias cannot understand that in their heat of outrage, which the neutral and objective people do.

One journalist has persuasively made a case in Firstpost on the need for journalists to confine themselves to official statements and communiqués, and not speculate on peripheral unsubstantiated information guided by their base instincts of outrage, shock, and horror.

Which basically means you journalists really shouldn’t be writing anything until the government spokesman tells you, what’s what. He’s also quoted a lot of biggies in the journalism world that he studied in journalism school, and made innovative connections to prove his case.

However, meddlesome as the public is, and typical and universal as a law enforcement officers’ instincts are in every country on earth, the climate surrounding Gauri Lnkesh’s life, and even now, after her death, will be taken into account as a first response.

That climate is hateful, spiteful, fanatical, sadistic….and murderous. That climate and the players that are elemental in making up that climate WILL be considered significant and instrumental in building up the case.